3

Policy Development for Reconfiguring Consumption and Production
Patterns in the Asian Region
Masahiko HIRAO1*, Tomohiro TASAKI2, Yasuhiko HOTTA3 and Norichika KANIE4
1

Department of Chemical Systems Engineering, The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
2
Material Cycles Division and Social Systems Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies,
16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan
3
Sustainable Consumption and Production Area. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies,
2108-11 Kamiyamaguchi, Hayama-shi, Kanagawa 240-0115, Japan
4
Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University,
5322 Endo, Fujisawa-shi, Kanagawa 252-0882, Japan*E-mail: hirao@chemsys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract
Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns in the Asia region is a high-priority
policy issue but challenged by a number of obstacles and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
This article argues that not only conventional policy approaches but also alternative approaches are needed in
Asia to decouple socio-economic development and increases in environmental loads from people’s sense ofwell-being. To achieve human and planetary well-being under the situation of compressed development, four
strategic courses of SCP policy are presented. These four courses are SCP policy expansion, enhanced linkage
of consumption and production (CP), system transition and bottom-up approaches. Policy makers in Asia
should keep these courses of action in mind and utilize opportunities, 13 of which are outlined here, tomainstream SCP. The 13 SCP opportunities, the key words of which include among others experience, genuine
wealth, local design, digitalization, infrastructure, indigenous wisdom, collaboration and challenges, indicate
entry points for Asian SCP policy development in the 2020s. Finally, based on these, the authors have devised
an SCP case matrix and produced 43 example SCP cases for better application of the suggested SCP policy
approach in the Asian region.
Key words: Asia, evidence-based policy making, sufficiency approach,sustainable consumption and production (SCP), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
system transition

1. Introduction
Economic growth over the past few decades hasbrought affluence to people around the world and reduced
poverty. The extreme poverty rate has dropped
considerably in most developing regions in the last two
decades, reducing rates by between 46% and 94% in Asia
(UN, 2015a). Significant negative impacts on theenvironment and societies have surfaced, however. Global
resource consumption and environmental loads such as
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste discharge
have increased to support a wealthier consumer lifestyle,and economic disparities among regions and countries arerising. These tendencies are expected to increase andexpand even further in the future.
Global Environmental Research
25/2021: 003–014
printed in Japan

Today, the Asian region is the world’s cradle ofproduction. Its economic growth is remarkable, with
consumption and accompanying environmental impacts
expanding at a rapid pace (UN ESCAP, 2021a). Between
2000 and 2017, the material footprint of the Asia-Pacificregion increased at the largest and fastest pace in theworld, and GHG emissions in the Asia-Pacific region
were also remarkable (IRP, 2017). Per capita income isstill low (UN ESCAP, 2021a), and environmental impacts
in the Asia-Pacific region will continue to increase at thefastest pace in the world for now, with the region’s sharein global environmental impacts expected to rise.
One course of action for the future is the expectationthat the conversion to high-value-added industries andindustries with high levels of resource productivity will
2021 AIRIES4

M. HIRAO et al.

continue. With a focus on intellectual capital, the numberof patents worldwide almost doubled from 14 million to
30 million over the past 19 years from 1992 to 2010 (Yagi& Managi, 2017), but the proportion from developed
countries decreased from 97% to 88%. The application of
intellectual capital in developing countries is expected toincrease in the future.
In addition, future changes in technology will benotable, such as digitization, including ICT (informationand communication technology), AI (artificial
intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things). Although thesetechnologies may lead to a reduction in environmental
impacts as a result of improved efficiency, there is also a
danger that they will result in an increase inenvironmental loads due to increased consumption of new
kinds.
By contrast, rapid economic growth has exaggerated
economic disparities, for example, between urban andrural areas. More developed countries in Asia have higher
shares of older rural residents and the urban-rural gap inservices such as electricity can be wide, particularly inless developed countries (UNDP, 2016). Attention must be
paid to these types of unstable elements among Asiansocieties. In addition, along with the growth ofagribusiness, relocation of industries to rural areas,development of local cities and increased numbers of
migrant workers, it is possible for households even inrural areas to enjoy a consumer lifestyle that is not muchdifferent from those of urban residents, making a livingusing products from domestic cities and foreign markets(Rigg and Vandergeest, 2011; Rigg et al., 2012). As such,the driver to maintain “self-sufficient”-type farm villages
in these areas is weakening.
Using only the roads taken by developed countries asa reference will result in a failure to stay current with
global trends. There are two significant differences withthe paths taken by developed countries: (1) (latent)changes in consumer lifestyles and values and (2) changes
in production patterns based on technological changes asrepresented by digitization. Whittaker et al. (2010) also
pointed out differences in development, focusing on the
speed of development and associated consequences,calling it “compressed development.”
As described in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development and indicated as the twelfth of the 17
sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015b), theshift to sustainable consumption and production (SCP)
patterns is an urgent agenda in Asia. Asian countries havealready introduced many policies to accelerate thetransition to SCP patterns in areas including, but notlimited to, cleaner production, waste management andgreen public procurement. However, against the backdropof rapid industrialization resulting in the urbanization andexpansion of the middle-class, those conventional policy
measures contribute mainly to efficiency of production.
They will not be enough to address the challenges

mentioned above.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020changed consumption and production (CP) patterns allover the world significantly. According to the IEA (2021),
global energy demand in 2020 declined by 4%, the largest
decrease since World War II. Many attempts have been
made to understand the influences of COVID-19 andforesee CP patterns in the future. For example, Echegaray(2020) described changes in 12 domains of daily practice(such as work, education, leisure, mobility and housing)qualitatively and discussed their potential future. Boons etal. (2020) also discussed the effect of the COVID-19 oneight types of practices and various levels of retaining
new practices: (1) recovery, (2) collapse, (3) accelerated
transition to digitalization and (4) accelerated transition tosustainable development, as well as rebound effects. In
fact, a projection by the IEA (2021) indicated a reboundof global energy demand in 2021 exceeding the
pre-COVID 2019 level. Tasaki et al. (2021a) applied aworkshop method and identified 48 changes in fivedomains, distinguishing between those likely to return to
the “old normal,” which accounted for 48% of thechanged CP patterns, and those likely to become the “newnormal.” With regards to policy for recovery from the
COVID-19 pandemic, UN ESCAP (2021b) discussed
recovery strategies of Asia-Pacific cities taking thisopportunity to build back better for sustainable, healthy
and resilient urban development. SCP policy has toconsider the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic on
top of its evolution in the past.
This article argues SCP policy development to ensure
SCP patterns in Asia. We will first explain the authors’
research project on SCP, called “Policy Design and
Evaluation to Ensure Sustainable Consumption and
Production Patterns in the Asian Region (PECoP-Asia),”
and then present four strategic courses for SCP policies
which policy makers should keep in mind. Then, we
present 13 opportunities to mainstream SCP in Asia andtheir application.

2. Development of Courses of SCP Policy
Figure 1 illustrates the SCP concept. It is vital to

Fig. 1 Concept of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP).

Policy Development for Sustainable Consumption and Production in Asia

establish SCP patterns that decouple socio-economic
development and increases in environmental loads fromthe real sense of securing people’s well-being andhappiness.
The PECoP-Asia project is a research project
launched in 2016, gathering 11 research groups in Japan
from different fields: systems engineering, urban
engineering, sociology, policy science, environmental
economics and business administration. The project aims
to design policy packages for achieving SCP patterns in
the Asian region. Each group approaches this common
goal from its field of expertise using various stakeholders’practices and considering characteristics of respective
areas, including their economy and lifestyles.
A task force established during the project made adraft policy report for SCP policy makers by integrating
research results and policy recommendations of all
research groups. The Asia-Pacific Roundtable on
Sustainable Consumption and Production (APRSCP)
reviewed the draft and proposed several viewpoints that it
had found lacking, e.g., the importance of bottom-up
approaches.
The first version of the policy report proposed fourcourses of SCP policy and 12 opportunities for SCP
policymaking (PECoP-Asia, 2018). Based on the policy
report, a policy brief was compiled and publicized in aside event of the United Nations High-Level Political
Forum on Sustainable Development 2018 (PECoP-Asia &APRSCP, 2018). In 2020, we revised the first version
considering the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic as
described in the Introduction.

3. Four Strategic Courses of SCP Policy
To respond to the environmental, economic, andsocial problems mentioned in the introduction and to5achieve the SDGs all over the world, it is necessary not
only to treat the “symptoms” of individual issues, but also
to transform human activities fundamentally and change
our governance (Kanie & Biermann, 2017). Geels et al.
(2015) explained that there are three different positionsfor SCP: reformist, revolutionary and reconfigurative
positions. The latter two positions take transformation
into account, paying more attention to it.
This section proposes four strategic courses that SCP
policies shall pursue to achieve the SDG 12 goals with atarget year of 2030 as described below. These courses ofaction are in line with future mid- to long-term policies inthe “Asia Pacific Regional Roadmap for Sustainable
Consumption and Production” (see UNEP and APRSCP(2017) for the latest version) and the Cebu declaration of
APRSCP (2021).
3.1 SCP Policies are Expanding from theEnvironmental Policy Domain to
the Socio-economic Technology Domain
SCP policies must include contents suited to thecontext of each country, as argued by Tasaki and Kojima(2021) in this special issue. Many Asian countries havestrengthened SCP policies covering areas such as cleaner
production, renewable energy, waste management andconsumer information. These policies cover theconventional targets among the range of the SCP policies
that have expanded for the last four decades. SCP policies
have also changed institutional and regulatory structures
to some extent, as reflected in SCP National Action Plans,
providing the platform for inter-ministerial coordinationand partnerships with the private sector and otherstakeholders.
Figure 2 illustrates policy goals and the growth ofmenus according to the expansion of policy issues basedon Hotta et al. (2021). As shown in the first column, SCP

Fig. 2 Expanding focus and menu of SCP policies.

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M. HIRAO et al.

policies have conventionally focused on pollution
prevention such as cleaner production and proper
treatment by introducing so-called end-of-pipe measures
into industrial processes. This version of SCP policies isnamed SCP 1.0. In the second column, it then includes anefficiency approach for products and services shown forseparating environmental loads and economic growth
associated with the use of energy and resources. Thisversion is referred to as SCP 2.0.
Recently, alternative approaches beyond pollution
prevention and efficiency have gained wider attention as aresult of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, which havefostered momentum toward decarbonization. This version
is referred to as SCP3.0. As shown in the third column,
circular economy (EC, 2015) and sharing economy (Belket al., 2019) are contributing to the decoupling of
consumption of non-renewable, natural resources from thewelfare and well-being of society as a whole, and havebecome popular. In the meantime, societies in Asia arewitnessing the emergence of innovative business models
based on digitization, contributing to a substantial
reduction of resource and energy use in the production
process, as well as alternative models for meeting
demands of the people. SCP 3.0 is thus oriented for
one-planet living, employing more integrated systems
thinking as shown in the third column. In SCP3.0,
consumption and production are the means for prosperity
and sustainability. SCP policies focus on transforming
lifestyles and business models from efficiency tosufficiency, and thus contribute to human and planetarywell-being. Figure 3 shows the hierarchical structure ofthese three versions of SCP policies.
It is very important to emphasize here that SCP is not
anymore limited to the environmental policy domain suchas pollution control, waste management and recycling,cleaner production, eco-labelling or consumers’ awarenessbut has expanded to the socio-economic-technology
policy domain such as infrastructure building, welfare,business development, local development and innovation.
Two SCP workshops have also confirmed this point(Tasaki et al., 2021b).

Fig. 3 Three versions of SCP.

A policy mix to achieve specific policy goals does
not have to be uniform, but must be able to maximize theeffects of SCP policies effectively through flexible andstrategic combinations depending on the industrial,consumption and urban structures of each country.
Roughly speaking, developed countries have responded tochanges from SCP 1.0 through SCP 2.0 to SCP 3.0
gradually. In Asian developing countries where economic
growth is rapid, however, all three versions are necessary.
SCP 1.0 is for local Asian communities, placing
importance on safe local living spaces. SCP 2.0 is for
global Asian exporters of products for globalized markets.
Without globalized eco-commodities, the current global
economy cannot be sustained. SCP 3.0 is for Asia itself,
calling for a sufficient, creative and prosperous Asia in the
future without compromising sustainability.
3.2 Strengthening Linkages between Consumption
and Production is a Key Emerging Movement
The conventional pattern of economic development
is driven by mass production and consumption. Value
chains have expanded across the world throughspecialization and subdivision. Consequentially, thedistance between consumers and producers has become
wider. In these circumstances, improved efficiency at eachpoint will not be enough to achieve SCP, and the linkingof the subsystems of consumption and production(referred to as “CP linkage”) will play an important role.
Conventional policies have tried to strengthen the CP
linkage by providing better information such as throughenvironmental labelling, certification and footprint
indicators. Alternative approaches have been introduced
recently. Figure 4 shows five types of linkages forstrengthening CP linkages for the case of a CP system
regarded as constructed of four subsystems: processing
and manufacturing (including natural resource extraction),provision, consumption, and circulation. Three of thelinkages (blue, green and red) are to strengthen CP
linkages between final consumption and the other threeelements, and two (purple and yellow) are to strengthen
the CP linkages within each consumption or production
subsystem.
The first linkage (green) is feed-back fromconsumption to design and production which enables
proper quantities to be produced and on-demand
production and localized/customized production to beachieved. The second linkage (red) is circularity, andenables circular production, remanufacturing, recycling
and life extension, considering lifecycle management of
products/parts/materials. The third linkage (blue) is
product use without ownership, and enables
implementation of product service systems, function
provision, sharing, lease and servicizing. The fourth
linkage (purple) is within consumption, and makes C2C
sharing and reuse possible. The fifth linkage (yellow) is
industrial symbiosis, in which material, by-products,

Policy Development for Sustainable Consumption and Production in Asia

7

Fig. 4 Five types of linkages between consumption and production.

waste, water and energy are exchanged and utilized,
between industries in as efficient a way as in natural
systems.
3.3 Transition to SCP is a Socio-technical Regime
Shift Requiring Successive Changes in Social
Practices, Technology Use in Daily Life andAssociated Infrastructure
CP patterns are framed by and embedded in existing
regimes, such as taxation and education, andinfrastructure, such as logistics and energy provisionsystems, and maintained/updated by the accumulation ofdaily practices of people and organizations (Spaargaren,
2011; Shove, 2016; Spurling et al., 2013). Raising theawareness of consumers can sometimes influence their
behavior for the time being; however, behavioral changes
will not take root unless they are associated with changes
in the wider contexts of their day-to-day living, including
moving, eating, caring for family, working, learning,
resting and so on.
Therefore, it is necessary to transform oursocio-technical regimes/systems in such ways as has been
attempted repeatedly in the transition research field(Köhler et al., 2019). This includes changing social
mechanisms and modes of technology use to create andprovide services and new infrastructure and institutionalsettings. The recent Cebu declaration (APRSCP, 2021)
also paid much attention to this approach in the Asian
context, referring to two courses of action: 1) innovativetransition through green future development and 2)
systematic transformation through a green development
agenda. Examples include mobility and energy; resourceand
energy-saving
practicesinworkplaces;
community-based initiatives to build capacity for
reducing; reusing and recycling; and others.

3.4 Bottom-up Approaches are Necessary for
Enhancing Effectiveness and Acceptance of SCP
Policies across the Region.
The above-mentioned SCP courses need to be
triggered by local- and community-level initiatives in
addition to national/international-level agenda setting.
However, there exist huge gaps between international/
national agendas (long-term and mid-term goals) andlocal concerns. Actions therefore need to be incubated in“arenas” where multi-stakeholder partnership isformulated and various buds of co-creation grow incollaboration beyond the boundaries of the conventional
stakeholders, as opposed to simply upscaling successful
initiatives, to enhance the effectiveness and acceptance of
SCP policies.

4. Emerging Opportunities for SCPThis section discusses 13 opportunities for SCP
based on the strategic considerations raised above.
4.1 Opportunity 1: Experience Matters
In the long term, experiential or intangible
consumption is even more important in pursuing people’s
happiness. CP patterns that contain both tangible andintangible elements create well-being.
According to the results of a questionnaire survey(Tsurumi et al., 2020a), material consumption increases
subjective well-being to a certain level, while relational(non-material) consumption continues to increase thelevel of subjective well-being as consumption increases.
That is, intangible experiential consumption plays animportant role for our subjective well-being in an affluent
society, which Asian emerging countries are becoming. It
also widens opportunities for a sharing economy,

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Opportunity 8, and dematerialization. In addition, amongpeople who take better care of their possessions, thiseffect was reversed (Tsurumi et al., 2020b). Therefore, if
people own fewer products but have a strong attachment
to them, they can retain happiness while decreasingmaterial consumption. This opportunity is in line with thetraditional way of life in Asia in aspriing for a better life.
4.2 Opportunity 2: Genuine Wealth
Measuring society’s genuine wealth and its
components as needs, including risk avoidance needs, in aform that accords with the present time, is the basis ofcreating a new CP pattern.
In the future, perceptions of social change will betransformed, which means that a new evaluation axis will
be needed. There are also trends that measure thesubjective conditions of people, such as their degree of
happiness and anxiety (Tasaki et al., 2010). From an
economic perspective, new indicators are being proposed
based on a discussion called “Beyond GDP” that captures
wealth as stock (e.g., inclusive wealth, new capital wealthindicators) rather than capturing wealth as flow. These
indicators convert different types of capital, such as
infrastructure, human resources and the naturalenvironment into monetary units and comprehensively
measure them, with attention paid to the accumulation ofcapital for sustainability (Dasgupta et al., 2015; Managi,2016). The inclusive wealth indicator (Managi & Kumar,
2018; Yamaguchi et al., 2019) has recently been utilized
in both developed and developing countries (Dasgupta,
2021; UNEP, 2021). Even local governments use theindicator to rely on and sustain precious local capital(Managi & Tanaka, 2018). By replacing GDP, the newmeasurement of genuine wealth can change the course ofdevelopment.
4.3 Opportunity 3: Environmental Policy
Reinforcement
The trends exemplified by the Paris Agreement andESG (environment, social and governance) investments
reinforce the policies at the government level while
promotingenvironmental
measuressuchasdecarbonization and corporate initiatives. The loss fromdelayed action to initiatives and criticism toward the
managerial short-termism is intensifying.
There are emerging trends that encourage thedevelopment of environmental policies, such as the Paris
Agreement and ESG investment, with increased attention
to the necessity of accelerating global movements towards
decarbonization and sustainability. The recognition thatcurrent
environmental
measureswill
increasecompetitiveness in the market is expanding. In this way,the “game change” phenomenon is already occurring. A
growing number of companies are involved in advancing
SCP, the SDGs and ESG with increasing popularity acrossthe globe. Active participation by developing countries,

especially emerging economies, is inevitable, and it is
crucial to ensure such actions are practical.
Attention has to be paid to insufficient management
resources at companies in Asian developing countries.
Yagi and Kokubu (2020) therefore proposed a phased
corporate management framework with five stages. It isnecessary to consider not only the external environmentof companies but also their internal situation for effective
actions for SCP with the understanding that delayed
actions have become a company risk.
4.4 Opportunity 4: Circular Economy
The CE (circular economy) and sustainable value
chain concepts upgrade environmental and industrial
policies toward integrated measures. The concept also
advances cross-border standardization and collaboration,and promotes CP patterns that reduce adverse effects fromraw material extraction to the end of life.
The CE concept involves material selection thatmakes little or no distinction between primary materials
and secondary recycled materials. It also promotes
improvements in the quality of secondary materials,
components
andproducts
through
RRRDR(remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair and direct reuse)(see Matsumoto et al. (2021) for remanufacturing in Asia).
Value chain management seeks to enhance productdesigns to better suit consumer lifestyles while enhancing
overall environmental efficiency across the lifecycle.
Promoting industrial symbiosis is also key to acircular economy. In Asia, there is a sufficient margin forrecycling through inter-industrial and transboundary
symbiosis for steel slag, aluminum dross and waste(Cravioto et al., 2021). Impacts on the environment andhumans can be reduced by symbiosis utilizing industrial
waste as resources. Additional effects can be generated
through the transboundary movement of waste forsymbiosis while proper measures are taken underframeworks such as the Basel Convention, because not allindustries presumed to be present in developed countries
necessarily exist in those countries in Asia (Ori et al.,2014).
For a circular economy, material sorting plays animportant role. It is necessary to consider ways to use
human resources and infrastructure in the informal sector
and reorganize formal systems, since there is a possibilityof affecting poverty and labor.
4.5 Opportunity 5: Sophisticated Information
Provision
Knowledge about designing and customizing
information provision for a behavioral shift is
progressively accumulating.
Simple information provision alone has limited
power to change consumer behaviors (e.g., Thaler &Sunstein, 2008; SWITCH-Asia, 2014). Recent
developments in fields such as behavioral economics havePolicy Development for Sustainable Consumption and Production in Asiaemphasized new and diverse ways to provide informationand influence consumer choice. Such insights, including
tailoring environmental information to guide consumer’s
decisions, can be utilized in SCP policies to make themmore effective.
It is necessary to devise ways to provide more
effective environmental information. Specifically, it isimportant to provide relevant environmental information
at each stage of decision-making by consumers and othersfor purchasing or selecting a product or service.
4.6 Opportunity 6: Design for Local Needs
Product and service design that reflects people’s
needs in a local context and the “new normal” era moves
the consumer market.
A disproportionate focus on product quality can leadto overconsumption as well as diminish consumer
satisfaction through function fatigue. Product design
should seek to improve human sufficiency by not only
adding new features but also streamlining andsimplification. Such designs should cohere throughout theentire product lifecycle without undue emphasis on the
optimization of production processes. Localized productdesign is an entry point for SCP to achieve appropriatequality at a reasonable price while preventing
overconsumption.
In local-oriented design that corresponds to regional
diversity, the following two perspectives are important:(1) that of what should be cut from functions andstructures of products in developed countries (concept ofsubtraction) or what should be recognized as minimum
necessary requirements (concept of addition), and (2) thatof improving sufficiency throughout life, not the
optimization of individual products. Support techniques
and tools for local-oriented product design have been put
forward by Kobayashi et al. (2021) in this special issue.
4.7 Opportunity 7: Digital Transformation
Digitization technology is a powerful tool forreforming CP patterns and generating diverse options andvalues.
If emerging economies in Asia follow along the pathof economic growth taken by developed countries,
consumption of resources and energy can be expected torise with an increase in the number of products owned,
making the realization of SCP increasingly difficult.
However, there is a potential to achieve leapfrog
development (cf. Fong, 2009). For instance, IoT (Internetof Things) and AI (artificial intelligence) both comprisepromising technologies that effectively link digital
opportunities to SCP efforts. Integration of suchtechnologies with renewable energy and appropriatetechnology (Hazeltine & Bull, 1999), and making data
accessible to users helps formulate new systems for SCP
practices in line with the four strategic courses of SCP
policy. In addition, such technologies can expand

9

stakeholders’ capacities for changing ways to measure andmainstream SCP implementation.
4.8 Opportunity 8: Sharing Economy
A sharing economy is one pathway to strengthening
CP linkages. Take advantage of this opportunity while
implementing infection prevention.
With the widespread use of mobile terminals,
electronic payment systems, and IoT, it has become easy
to connect consumers who want others to use unused
possessions and consumers who want to use them. In
addition, there are more customs of sharing in Asian
countries compared with Europe and the United States(Belk, 2010). The penetration of the sharing economy
may increase resource efficiency in the form of increased
availability of products. However, whether theenvironmental load will decrease or increase as a result of
sharing depends on the lifecycle characteristics of the
products to be shared and sharing systems (Amasawa
et al., 2020). Promoting sharing activities andunderstanding the conditions under which such activities
can reduce environmental loads are important tasks of
SCP policy and CP transformation.
4.9 Opportunity 9: Infrastructure for SCP
Urban planning, infrastructure development, rules
and customs greatly influence the pursuit of lifestyles thatalign with SCP patterns. It is necessary to balance thedevelopment of digital infrastructure supporting online
lifestyles and other infrastructure supporting activities thatare difficult to perform online.
In many emerging cities in Asia, the development of
infrastructure, such as public transportation, sewerage andwaste disposal, are far from sufficient and generate
problems, such as traffic congestion, air pollution andwater pollution. Even if such infrastructure exists,
maintenance and operations may not be performed
properly. Further improvement and development of
infrastructure enabling sustainable lifestyles and support
for people having low accessibility to such infrastructure
are therefore needed. It is also important to combine
various infrastructures properly including digital
infrastructures and alternative infrastructures that suit theera of decarbonization. In this sense, existing gaps ininfrastructure in Asia provide opportunities for building
low-carbon, resource-efficient and inclusive energy,transportation and housing systems because the emerging
Asian cities would not have to eliminate old-fashioned
infrastructure as cities in developed countries have to.
Rules and customs can inhibit people from practicing
more sustainable behaviors as much as infrastructure can.
SCP policy should pay attention to such “soft”
infrastructure, too.

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4.10 Opportunity 10: New Rules & Indigenous
WisdomNew rules and customs that envisage a risk society
are emerging with the coronavirus pandemic. Together
with traditional regional wisdom like “mottainai(wastefulness)” and “sufficiency economy,” they are
driving the creation of new CP patterns.
The coronavirus pandemic urges people to establish a“new normal.” Changing behaviors by changing tacit
rules or utilizing indigenous wisdom is an ongoing andenhanced course of SCP policy. One example of theformer is the Cool-Biz campaign of Japan, which
encourages lighter dress to alleviate the discomfort
associated with hotter temperatures brought about from
efforts to reduce the energy consumption of air
conditioning in offices, trains and other public spaces.
This policy was guided by multi-stakeholder partnerships.
The latter, utilizing indigenous wisdom andembedding it into SCP policies, is an approach for
improving policy effectiveness. People may not know theterm “SCP” but recognize the orientations and importanceof SCP policies and tend to embed them into their daily
lives. New codes of sustainable business practices should
also reflect people’s cultural backgrounds. Material Flow
Cost Accounting (MFCA) can be seen as one way toreflect mottainai in corporate management processes.
4.11 Opportunity 11: Enhancing Collaboration
Cooperation,
co-creation
andcollaborative
relationships among stakeholders, both regionally andinternationally, are the key to SCP’s success.
Multi-stakeholder engagement processes andfacilitation mechanisms for good governance are vital for
implementation of policies and they enhance ownership ofaction. (For creating partnerships, see the guidelines by
UNU-IAS & UN ESCAP (2018), for example.) There has
been significant progress in promoting and implementing
SCP in the region through stakeholder involvement,
through a continuous effort for knowledge sharing andprivate-public partnerships. Existing regional policy
platforms such as APRSCP, SWITCH-Asia SCP Facility,business entities and expert networks such as PECoP-Asia
are valuable channels for driving networking efforts
between different SCP-related initiatives
4.12 Opportunity 12: Challenges & Safety Nets
Ensuring a social safety net for people with thecourage to try new consumption and production patterns
will generate diverse SCP patterns.
Taking on challenges is a key to transforming CP
patterns: A challenging spirit helps one envision anonexistent CP pattern and motivates experimentation
with the new CP pattern in a real society. However,challenges fail with a certain probability. If failure bringsa high cost to challengers, they will not undertake thechallenge. The existence of a social safety net for

challengers is therefore important for generating diverse
SCP patterns. The scope of SCP policy should thus beexpanded to include a variety of attempts to ensure social
safety nets.
4.13 Opportunity 13: Social Justice
Proper handling of inequality and social conflicts isthe fundamental basis for realizing SCP. New inequality
and injustice problems caused by digitalization must be
resolved promptly.
Neither benefits nor costs of SCP transitions arenecessarily distributed among people evenly. This cancause social conflicts and prevent SCP transition. The
coronavirus pandemic has elucidated vulnerable people inour society who may face a more severe situation during asustainability transition. For example, to switch oursociety toward decarbonization, coal and oil industries
have to be transformed and some workers in theseindustries will have to change jobs. Thus job/skill training
and other programs will be needed to support such
workers (e.g., EC (2020) put forward the “Just Transition
Mechanism” targeting a fair and just green transition andwould mobilize at least €100 billion in investments to
support workers, companies and regions most impacted
by the transition). Adequate care should also be paid indigital transformation to unfair use of personal
information and disproportionate risks to system crashes
in the online world. New injustice problems should be
identified cautiously and then prevented promptly.

5. Application of Opportunities to SCP Policy
DesignTo ensure SCP patterns in Asia, we need to have aconcrete image of them and then proceed to experiment as
the concept of envisioning-based policy making (EnBPM)
suggests (Hotta et al., 2021). In this process, continuousand strategic changes are necessary. The 13 SCP
opportunities are entry points to the process and aresuggested to be incorporated into the experimentation.
Figure 5 shows specific example cases of SCP patterns
and actions using some of the 13 opportunities for SCP in
Asia.
Many ideas can be generated from such cases in linewith the context of a target country or region, and it
would be preferable that this visioning process itself be
implemented in each country or region. We therebycompiled a table called the SCP Case Matrix to serve as areference for that localized/regionalized process. The
matrix shown in Fig. 6 not only presents the ideas of 43
SCP cases but also enables users to search through three
aspects: CP patterns, SCP opportunities and stakeholders.
First, the CP patterns and their categories are listed asheadings on the left side of the matrix. If users areinterested in what kind of CP patterns they wish to realize,
they search through this left-hand column. If they arePolicy Development for Sustainable Consumption and Production in Asia

interested in how to work on it, they search through theopportunity columns in the middle for an entry point ofaction. If they are interested in who works on it, they
search through the right stakeholder columns.
Each of the 43 specific cases is categorized into oneof the following seven categories:- Localized design and utilization of local wisdom- Circular economy (product and resource circulation)- Integrated system design of products, businesses andinfrastructure (including sharing and digital

11

transformation)- Policy approaches based on experiential consumption- New EBPM (EnBPM) for sustainable lifestyles- Co-creation and social experimentation- Improvement and importation of conventional SCP
policies
These are notable future courses of action for Asian SCP
policies. Their further elaboration in line with Asian
contexts is expected in Asian countries.

Fig. 5 Specific example cases of SCP patterns and actions using some of the 13 opportunities for SCP in Asia.

Fig. 6 SCP case matrix.

12

M. HIRAO et al.

6. Conclusion and Outlook
Promotion of SCP in Asia is a high-priority issue, andif successful, can make a significant contribution to theprosperity of the world and humankind. This article
presents four courses of action for future SCP policies and
13 specific opportunities. All of the 13 opportunities
indicate promising entry points for SCP policy
development and implementation in the 2020s.
The 13 SCP opportunities shall be supported by twomeans. Firstly, they should be linked to the SDGs
implementation process at local, national and international
levels. Such implementation would promote theachievement of Goal 12. To obtain outcomes tackling awide range of SCP targets, it will be necessary to addressefforts comprehensively, not only to implement initiatives
in individual sectors in a silo manner. Inter-ministerial
coordination as well as stakeholder consultation processes
will be the key to SCP.
Secondly, it is necessary to have facilitation
mechanisms at the regional level. Existing regional policy
platforms such as APRSCP, SCP regional facilitation
mechanisms such as the SWITCH-Asia SCP facility,business entities, expert networks such as PECoP-Asia as
well as leading national and local governments can put
forth an effort to network different initiatives at theregional level. Enhancement of facilitation mechanisms
shall play an important role in accelerating theachievement of the SDGs.
Acknowledgments
The authors express their gratitude to the board
members of APRSCP and all collaborators with the
PECoP-Asia project. This study was supported by theEnvironment Research and Technology Development
Fund (JPMEERF16S11600) of the Environmental
Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan.
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Masahiko HIRAO
Masahiko Hirao is a professor of chemicalsystems engineering at The University of Tokyo.
He is the project leader of the PECoP-Asia
research project for policy design of SCP in
Asia. His current interests are sustainableconsumption and production: sustainable process
and product design and sustainable social system consumer support forenvironmentally conscious behavior. He received his Ph.D. in chemicalengineering from The University of Tokyo in 1989.

Tomohiro TASAKI
Tomohiro Tasaki is head researcher in the
Material Cycles and Social Systems Research
Section of the Material Cycles Division, and a
researcher in the Social Systems Division of the
National Institute for Environmental Studies(NIES), Japan. He is leader of Theme 2 of the
PECoP-Asia
research
project
for
SCP
in
Asia
(see
http://www.susdesign.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/s-16/). His academic backgroundincludes both systems engineering and policy science. His current work is
mainly focused on the following three themes: establishing a regime
inclusive of future generations and sustainability indicators, transitioning
to sustainable consumption and production patterns and sustainable
lifestyles, and evaluating and analyzing 3R (reduce, reuse andrecycle)/circular economy policies and waste treatment systems in the eraof population decline/aging. He holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Schoolof Yokohama National University, Japan.

Yasuhiko HOTTA
Yasuhiko Hotta is director of the Sustainable
Consumption and Production Area, Institute for
Global Environmental Strategies. He holds a
Ph.D. in International Relations from the
University of Sussex in 2004. He has been
involved in both policy initiatives and research
projects in relation to sustainable resource circulation such as the G8’s 3R
Initiative, Working Group for 3R Policies for Southeast and East Asia at
the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) andOECD’s Working Party for Resource Productivity and Waste. From 2016
to 2021, he served as leader of Theme 3 of the PECoP-Asia research
project for SCP in Asia. He is also a part-time lecturer for the Tokyo
Institute of Technology. From 2021, he was appointed Vice President of
the Asia Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production(APRSCP).

Norichika KANIE
Norichika Kanie is a professor at the Graduate
School of Media and Governance, Keio
University. He is also a representative of thexSDG Laboratory, Keio Research Institute at
SFC, and an adjunct professor at the United
Nations University Institute for the Advanced
Study of Sustainability (UNI-IAS). He serves on various committees andsteering groups, and has been appointed by the UN Secretary-General as
one of 15 independent scientists to prepare the 2023 Global Sustainable
Development Report. His recent publications include: Norichika Kanie(eds.), “Governing through Goals: Sustainable Development Goals as
Governance Innovation”, MIT Press, 2017; and Norichika Kanie, et.al.,‘Rules to goals: emergence of new governance strategies for sustainable
development’, in Sustainability Science, Volume 14, Issue 6, 2019.

(Received 23 August 2021, Accepted 8 September 2021)